Louisiana is the world's prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly five times Iran's, 13 times China's and 20 times Germany's.

This latest story is sad and troubling in a few different ways. First of all, it's disgraceful that we've managed to lock up sufficient numbers of our fellow citizens that entire regional economies depend on their being locked up.

The aftershock tremors continue to rumble through Southwest Louisiana today after Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration announced last week that C. Paul Phelps Correctional Center in DeQuincy will close. The shuttering of the 54-year-old facility, the largest state-operated prison in our corner of the state, will cost the area about 260 direct jobs and countless more indirect jobs in the DeQuincy area. It's a blow to Southwest Louisiana, and in particular, DeQuincy and the surrounding areas in northern Calcasieu Parish and southern Beauregard Parish. The job loss is equivalent to the Lake Charles metro area losing more than 1,500 direct jobs.

If you're keeping score at home, there are 194,092 people in Calcasieu Parish. Nineteen percent of them have college educations. The median household income is $43,758 and 16 percent of the people there live below the poverty line. Things are about the same in Beauregard Parish. The loss of 260 jobs is going to take a considerable chunk out of the local economy. Have no fear, though. Jindal and Louisiana have hit upon a private-sector solution. Again from the Times-Pic:

The hidden engine behind the state's well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash. A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt. Several homegrown private prison companies command a slice of the market. But in a uniquely Louisiana twist, most prison entrepreneurs are rural sheriffs, who hold tremendous sway in remote parishes like Madison, Avoyelles, East Carroll and Concordia. A good portion of Louisiana law enforcement is financed with dollars legally skimmed off the top of prison operations.

This is what happens when you create an alien entity out of "the government," insist that The Market does everything better, and abandon the notion of a political commonwealth in favor of the performance ethic of the financial-services sector. This is what happens when both parties fetishize The Deficit and talk idiotically about how the government should "tighten its belt the way you and your family have to do it." For-profit prisons — like for-profit colleges, for-profit high schools and for-profit almost everything else — are comically, nightmarishly bad ideas, dedicated to profit, and not to public service, which are not the same thing, no matter how much the Republicans would like you to believe that they are. Jindal has a disaster on his hands, and he's pretending not to notice because, basically, no matter what Jesus said about visiting Him when he was in prison, who gives a fk about those people anyway?

And, of course, once you close this prison, you have to send the inmates somewhere, so why not to a place that has been a legendary hellhole for over 100 years....

It's also a shock for more than 920 minimum- and medium-security inmates at Phelps, the vast majority of whom will be transferred to Angola State Prison, the state's only maximum security prison. A source with knowledge of both prisons said the majority of Phelps' inmates are serving two- to five-year sentences while most of the Angola inmates will never be free. The crimes the Phelps' inmates committed don't rise to the level of... Angola.

And while you chew on that a minute, go on back to that Times-Pic series and read how inmates would much prefer to be in Angola than in any of the local, privately-run prisons under the control of the local satrap sheriff.

Inmates in local prisons are typically serving sentences of 10 years or less on nonviolent charges such as drug possession, burglary or writing bad checks. State prisons are reserved for the worst of the worst. Yet it is the murderers, rapists and other long-termers who learn trades like welding, auto mechanics, air-conditioning repair and plumbing. Angola's Bible college offers the only chance for Louisiana inmates to earn an undergraduate degree. Such opportunities are not available to the 53 percent serving their time in local prisons. In a cruel irony, those who could benefit most are unable to better themselves, while men who will die in prison proudly show off fistfuls of educational certificates.

Somehow, I think that why we have so many people locked up, and how we treat them when they're locked up, ought to be an issue in our national politics. (This would also require us to discuss our idiotic "war" on drugs and why we persist on being morons about it.) But when you've got a state where the inmates would rather be in Angola than in a for-profit prison, you've got to be thinking that something's gone bad wrong.

(Archivist's Note: The musical accompaniment to this post was recorded outdoors in Angola while Robert Pete Williams was a prisoner there. Hence, the birds singing back-up.)